Chairman C. Ben Mitchell, Ph.D. is professor of Bioethics at Trinity International University. He received his doctorate in philosophy with a concentration in medical ethics (with honors) from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. His program included a year-long clinical residency at the University of Tennessee Medical Center at Knoxville, Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, and a summer-long residency at the East Tennessee Mental Health Institute. He has done additional study in genetic for non-scientists at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, Cold Spring Harbor, New York and has twice been visiting scholar at Green College, the medical college at Oxford University. He is Co-Director for Biotechnology Policy and Fellow of the Council for Biotechnology Policy in Washington, D.C. He also serves as Senior Fellow with The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity in Bannockburn, Illinois, and is a consultant with the Center for Genetics & Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University. He is a widely published author and currently a member of the Templeton Oxford Symposium for which he is working on a volume on the emerging biotechnologies and their impact on our understanding of what it means to be human. He is editor of the journal, Ethics & Medicine: An International Journal of Bioethics (www.ethicsandmedicine.com). In addition to his academic work, Mitchell also consults on matters of public policy and has given testimonies before policymaking groups including the U. S. House of Representatives, the Institutes of Medicine, and the Illinois Senate. He has published in major news media, including the Washington Post. He is also interviewed regularly on radio and television, having appeared on National Public Radio, Fox News, MSNBC, and others.
John Keown, D. Phil. is Rose F Kennedy Professor of Christian Ethics in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University. In 1980 he graduated in law from Cambridge and subsequently obtained his doctorate from Oxford. He was then called to Bar of England and Wales. He taught medical law and ethics at the University of Leicester from 1986-1993 and at the University of Cambridge from 1993-2003, where he also held Fellowships at Queens' College and Churchill College. He has published widely in the field of medical law and ethics. His publications, which have been cited by the US Supreme Court and the House of Lords, include Abortion, Doctors and the Law (1988), Euthanasia Examined (1995) and Euthanasia, Ethics and Public Policy (2002), all published by Cambridge University Press.
William Hurlbut, M.D. is a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics and Consulting Professor at the Neuroscience Institute, Stanford University. After receiving his undergraduate and medical training at Stanford, he completed post doctoral studies in Theology and Medical Ethics, first studying under Robert Hamerton-Kelly, the dean of the chapel at Stanford and subsequently with Rev. Louis Bouyer of Paris. His main areas of interest involve the ethical issues associated with advancing technology and the integration of philosophy of biology with Christian theology. He has co-taught courses with Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Director of the Human Genome Diversity Project and Baruch Blumberg who received the Nobel Prize for discovery of the Hepatitis B Virus. Most recently, he has worked with the Center for International Security and Cooperation on a project formulating policy on Chemical and Biological Warfare and with NASA on projects in astrobiology.
Paige Comstock Cunningham, Esq. is an attorney and educator. Over the past twenty years, she has worked in both private practice and at a public interest law and education organization. She is a member of the board of directors of Americans United for Life. She is a Senior Fellow of The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, and a Fellow with the Wilberforce Forum’s Council on Biotechnology Policy. Cunningham also serves on the Board of Trustees of Taylor University and the National Advisory Council of Wheaton College’s Center for Applied Christian Ethics. While serving AUL as associate general counsel, Cunningham was instrumental in developing post-Webster protective state legislation. As president, she testified twice before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Cunningham was the pre-law advisor and adjunct instructor at Wheaton College (Wheaton, Illinois) for three years and currently serves on the adjunct faculty at Trinity Law School (Santa Ana, California). She is co-editor of The Reproduction Revolution: A Christian Appraisal of Sexuality, Reproductive Technologies, and the Family (Eerdmans 2000) and Abortion and the Constitution (Georgetown University Press, 1999). She also co-authored four booklets in the BioBasics Series (Kregel 1998) and has written numerous other articles on abortion, the law, and bioethics. In addition, Cunningham co-authored the amicus brief that Justice O’Connor cited in her discussion of viability in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services.